“It's in the long tail of decisions that are being left on the table today that nobody's looking at.” - Gonzalo Benedit, Chief Revenue Officer, Aera Technology
Procurement teams make decisions all day long. Some are significant enough to command immediate attention, while others compete for limited time and resources or simply never get addressed.
As the volume of data and business signals available to procurement grows, technology is creating an opportunity to rethink how those decisions are made and how many of them can realistically be acted on.
In this Provider of the Week conversation, I speak with Gonzalo Benedit, Chief Revenue Officer at Aera Technology, about decision intelligence and what it could mean for procurement going forward.
Where does decision intelligence fit within the procurement technology stack?
"We don't replace any of the transactional systems. We don't replace any of the systems of record. We sit on top of those systems, and we connect to them.
We bring all the information together that's required to make a decision, and then we provide recommendations. We can automate those decisions as well, depending on the level of autonomy that the organization wants to give the platform."
How can this change the work procurement teams are doing?
"The opportunity is to free up the procurement organization from a lot of the transactional activities that they're doing today and allow them to spend more time on the strategic activities, on the relationships with their suppliers, on the negotiations, on the things where the human element really matters.
Technology can take care of many of those decisions that today are either not being made, being made too late, or taking a lot of time from the procurement organization."
Where do you see some of the biggest untapped opportunities?
"It's in the long tail of decisions that are being left on the table today that nobody's looking at. There are thousands and thousands of decisions that could be made every day. But because of the limitations of people, time, and resources, organizations prioritize the biggest ones. With technology, you can start addressing that long tail and capturing value that otherwise would be left on the table."
How do you measure the value created by decision intelligence?
"Every recommendation that we make, every decision that is made, we measure the impact of that decision. So you can actually understand: Did I make the right decision? What was the value of that decision? And then you can feed that back into the system so the system continues to learn and improve the recommendations that it's making."
What advice would you give organizations that want to get started?
"Don't wait for perfect data. That's probably one of the biggest misconceptions that we see. Organizations sometimes think they need to have all their data clean and perfect before they can start. You can start with what you have. You can start small, demonstrate value, and then continue to improve the data and expand the use cases as you go."
How do you see procurement technology evolving from here?
"We see a future where you're going to have agents interacting with other agents, with systems, and with people. The technology stack is going to evolve significantly. The way that people interact with technology is going to change significantly. And I think procurement is going to be a very interesting area because there are so many decisions and so many interactions that happen across the enterprise and with suppliers."
To learn more about Aera Technology, visit their dedicated provider page in the Art of Procurement Provider Directory.